‘Afghans cannot kick US out, so we stay’

A medevac helicopter lifts off from Camp Nathan Smith in Kandahar. A decade of war costing thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars has left Afghanistan with a corrupt government, a widely criticised Western troop presence and only dim prospects for peace (AFP Photo) / AFP

On the 10th anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan on October 7, US troops are still there and the withdrawal deadline of 2014 seems to be up in the air.

­Retired USAF Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski believes the US never had any intention of allowing the Afghan people to choose anything.

“If they were allowed to chose, I think we would be long gone,” she said. “It is about big cover. They cannot kick us out and we are going to stay. We build permanent bases and we want to terrorize Pakistan, Iran, and be there to look over the mountains into China.”

Karen Kwiatkowski says that the US mission in Afghanistan was “somewhat successful” from the Pentagon’s and Obama administration’s point of view.

“When the Pentagon says ‘We are still there, we are making progress’ in a sense they are telling the truth,” she said. “In many ways the American people have not been told what we came to Afghanistan to do. And that mission is to build bases – which we have done – and to man those bases into operating a military front against other countries in the region.”

“It is not a success for the American people, who are very tired of this,” she added. “But the real reasons that we are in Afghanistan have never been put forward.”

Kwiatkowski says the reason for the US staying in Afghanistan becomes obvious if one looks at how the US military is operating in the Middle East.

“There is a good reason in their minds why they are there, and they plan to stay,” she said. “We like these military bases too well, we like the minerals, and we like the geographic positioning Afghanistan provides our military.”

­Former CIA officer, Philip Giraldi, says in-fighting in Washington over the withdrawal of troops is having a toxic effect on the decision-making process.

“I think there are two different assessments taking place here,” he said. “The one assessment is a political assessment, where the president of the United States, who is up for re-election, wants very much to make it look like the war in Afghanistan is ending.”

“If you look at the assessments that the military has been making for some time now, those assessments have always been much more pessimistic,” he continued. “In some cases they’ve said that the US would be there after 2015, in other cases they’ve said the US would be there for many years, without any date being suggested.”